Russian oil giant Rosneft employs ‘dozens’ of escorts, Navalny probe finds

Russian state oil giant Rosneft employs “dozens” of young women to provide escort services to its senior executives, a video investigation by late Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation revealed on Thursday.

Initially examining company employee records to gather information on Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, the Anti-Corruption Foundation instead uncovered what it called Sechin’s “personal escort agency” — women in their twenties, officially listed as working in administrative departments, who were in fact providing escort services.

Through photo analysis and the cross-referencing of information with phone and police databases as well as social media, the foundation confirmed that a “few dozen” young women on Rosneft’s payroll — who were earning “enormous” salaries far exceeding those of more experienced employees — had profiles on escort service websites.

According to the foundation, the women frequently accompanied Sechin and senior executives on trips to luxury destinations such as the United Arab Emirates, Maldives, Morocco and Qatar.

One woman, Albina Ivanova, was reportedly hired to be the deputy head of Rosneft’s business management division in 2016 aged just 21 years old, with a starting salary of over 300,000 rubles (€2,950) per month — “around twice as much as what her more experienced colleagues at Rosneft — engineers, economists and lawyers with years of experience — were being offered”, the investigation said.

By cross-referencing Ivanova’s posts on her Instagram profile — which she uses to document her travels and show off her expensive jewellery, handbags and luxury cars — with flight records and announcements of Sechin’s trips abroad, the Anti-Corruption Foundation established that she had accompanied him on his private jet at least 58 times over the past nine years.

Since 2017, Ivanova has also received a second salary from the Independent Oil and Gas Company, owned by Sechin’s close friend and former Rosneft CEO Eduard Khudainatov, the Anti-Corruption Foundation said.

While acknowledging that its investigation was ethically “complex” as “every woman has the right … to earn a living and manage her body as she sees fit”, the Anti-Corruption Foundation argued that the “line of personal space and choice is blurred the moment you enter the civil service” and stressed that, as the women’s salaries were being funded by the Russian taxpayer, the matter was of public interest.